DID YOU KNOW THAT….

The commercial building sector is the largest electric energy consumption segment in the U.S.  It currently represents almost 20 percent of all energy use and is growing faster than any other market segment.  Given the sheer magnitude of energy use in commercial buildings, any measures designed to save energy in the segment represent a significant opportunity for impact.

With that, the market has seen a recent surge in the number of companies focused on driving energy efficiency in commercial buildings, primarily through retrofit projects. Research suggests that ESCOs will exceed $5.1 billion this year in energy efficiency project installations. This number is expected to grow to $16 billion in sales by 2020.  

Despite the tremendous attention to commercial building retrofits, nearly half of the energy savings opportunity in commercial buildings remains untouched. Operational improvements — low and no cost improvements like changing temperature set points, implementing night setback schedules and reducing simultaneous heating and cooling — are the hidden and low hanging fruit of energy efficiency.  

For example, imagine an office building in which most people have left the building by 7 p.m., but the building does not begin its HVAC shutdown until 9 p.m. That’s two hours, or 8 percent of the day, spent at a high level of energy consumption, with little to no benefit to the building or its occupants. Easy adjustments to the building’s HVAC scheduling could save such a building 2 percent to 3 percent over an entire year, at no cost.

Why are operational improvements so hard to find?  Let’s start with the basics.  In order to identify energy savings opportunities, utilities and building owners typically start with on-site audits. Typical assessments run between $5,000 and $50,000 and take several weeks or more to complete. They also require multiple days onsite and a significant time investment from the building staff.  

These audits often use observations over days or weeks to make their conclusions. But beyond providing a look at monthly consumption patterns, these audits lack the ability to analyze a full year of daily and hourly consumption. Because companies looking for retrofit business often conduct these audits, they tend to focus on the physical assets of the building that can be readily observed. In short, there can be high barriers to even getting an audit, and if one is done, it’s unlikely to find operational issues.

Using highly sophisticated analytical techniques and an understanding of building science, a building’s utility data can reveal operational savings opportunities of up to 30 percent in commercial buildings. Some of these operational savings can be acted on by building owners without help and some may require retrofitting engineers to re-program, upgrade, or tune controls systems.  

Scott Raybin, President of The Green Savings Company said, “Every time I go into a building to try and sell the T5 Retrofit Kit, I’m struck by the wasted electricity that nobody can see. The Green Savings Company does not make any money from operational improvements but we notify management of improvements that can be made.  There is no doubt that building owners could save themselves thousands of dollars a year if they could get a handle on them.”

With so much misinformation consumers are not being given good information about lighting. Especially the particularly poor reporting about the ongoing elimination of 100w, 75w, 60w, and 40 incandescent lamps from the national inventory. In fact, incandescent lighting is not being eliminated or outlawed, but what is being eliminated are the least efficient, commonly used versions. As long as people pick the right bulb for the result they want, in terms of lighting quality and color, the alternatives available right now can do everything that incandescent do while costing much less and consuming far less energy.

A typical misinformed assertion will be that, “a 75w incandescent lamp is less expensive than a CFL [compact fluorescent lamp]”.  This is irresponsible, given that the statement is true only if you use the incandescent lamp for something like a paperweight. People need to know not the cost of buying one type of lamp or another, but rather the cost of owning and using one type lamp or another. Once people have that knowledge, they quickly realize that the incandescent lamps they grew up with are just about the most expensive there are, not the least expensive.

The table below can also be of value. It compares the ten-year cost of relying on 75w incandescent lighting to the cost of owning three alternatives: a 53w high-efficiency (halogen-filled) incandescent lamp, a 13w CFL, and a 17w LED lamp. As can be seen, the ten-year cost of owning and using a 75w incandescent lamp is more than five times the cost of owning a CFL that produces about the same amount and quality of light.

Keep in mind that the cost of ownership doesn’t consider a number of other costs, such as the additional carbon dioxide and mercury that’s put into the air by coal-fired power plants and by the planes, trains, ships, and trucks used to transport lamps from the factory to a distribution center, then to a warehouse, and then to a store. That’s ten times as many trips for conventional incandescents compared to CFLs; 25 as many trips for conventional incandescents vs. LEDs. There’s also all the extra packaging that has to be manufactured, and all the packaging and spent lamps that wind up in a landfill. If people were simply given the facts, they’d realize that all this fuss about losing incandescent lamps is a tempest in a teapot, based on misinformation. When people stop using conventional incandescent lamps, they lose nothing, they save money, and they’re gentler on the environment we all have to share.”

Many of the same people who have nothing to say about the significant environmental problems that conventional incandescent lamps cause seem to be extraordinarily concerned about the miniscule amount of mercury in CFLs, as though it were really something for the nation to worry about.  Here  are some FACTS:

Fact: The amount of mercury in a typical CFL is not enough to coat the head of a pin.

Fact: The typical swordfish contains 20 times more mercury than a typical CFL.

Fact: When a CFL is broken, most of its mercury adheres to the glass and does not disperse into the air.

Fact: Coal-fired electricity-generating plants comprise the nation’s most significant source of air-borne mercury.

 Focusing on the link between airborne mercury and coal-fired generation of electricity, the truth is that reliance on inefficient incandescent lamps as “freedom of choice” is unacceptable. If my neighbor decides to hoard 100w incandescent lamps and keep using them, my neighbor causes unnecessary generation of electricity. The unnecessary generation of electricity forces me to inhale mercury that would otherwise not be there. What happens to my freedom of choice? What happens to my family’s freedom of choice? It’s like being forced to inhale second-hand cigarette smoke simply because some people equate freedom of choice with doing what they prefer to do even if it harms others.

The new lighting-efficiency targets require people to give up nothing in terms of lighting quality, convenience, and versatility. The only thing they really require people to do is decide about the kind of lamp they want to use and how much money they want to save and that is not a bad thing.

Prescriptive rebates have set rebate amounts and custom rebates are tailored to specific projects

Lighting rebates are a challenge for many facility executives — especially those who oversee portfolios that span multiple states. Each utility typically has slightly different eligibility requirements.

The good news is that despite the variations from utility to utility, most utility rebate programs can be broken down into two types of programs: prescriptive rebates and the more involved custom-rebate programs.

Prescriptive rebate programs are pretty easy to understand. A fixed amount is given per fixture on a pre-approved list. “These are generally the lowest dollars you will get,” says Scott Raybin, President of The Green Savings Company.

Custom rebate programs on the other hand, allow much more generous rebates, Raybin says.

One recent lighting upgrade in a 1.5 million square foot facility shows the difference between the two types of programs.

The facility executives had been pursuing a custom rebate program and were expecting a rebate of around $250,000. Unfortunately, the facility executives launched the project and didn’t keep any of the old fixtures, nor even photos of the old fixtures. There was no way to prove kilowatt hour reductions claimed on the application.

That left the facility to claim a prescriptive rebate, which would reduce the rebate to $35,000 from $250,000.

So the biggest bang for the buck comes from custom rebate programs. They require more work though to document the savings.

“You really want to get everything laid out ahead of time,” says Raybin. “Lack of planning at the beginning is what will undo people at the end.”

[via facilitiesnet senior editor brandon lorenz]

Only the T5 Retrofit Kit can replace T8 lamps because of the difference in physical and electrical characteristics

When opting for T5 fluorescent technology it is always important to look at the application and determine the cost benefits and analyze the increased efficiency. These two factors alone will justify any substantial investment until rebates or incentives can level the playing field. The marketing and innovative design of T5 systems have left many end users wondering whether they should consider T5 luminaires instead of T8 luminaires, especially in new construction and retrofitting of T12 magnetic systems. Here is why T5 technology is the best linear fluorescent solution and how it applies.

There are several different factors that determine levels of efficiency. Quality of light measured in CRI (Color Rendering Index), quantity of light measured in LPW (Lumens per Watt) and co-efficiency of utilization. The numbers being used for CU are general for those used in the low level such as 12 feet and under multi-residential environments. Considering these general factors, it is obvious that T5 is the best.

With all factors weighed equally, a T8 is 40% more efficient than T12 and T5 is 51% more efficient than T12. The end user can often lower the light output by 9 or 10 percent in order to recover the efficiency without any real impact to the perceived light levels. Between the three, T5 is the premium product, whose research and development has reached a real-time application point. LED is the most popular buzzword and concept but is still a mythical creature when it comes to implementation and development to more than a few lighting industry insiders. The truth is T5 is superior to T8, and LED is years away from making a widespread impact.

The bottom line is that T5 is superior to T8 in that it creates more usable light. However, it is not a necessarily the superior technology that renders the T8 obsolete (as is the case with T12). It is however, the most important transition technology the commercial lighting market may ever see. What the T5 technology has going for it is the extensive energy efficiency and ability to gain utility rebates, recouping most of the upfront cost. Saving the most kWh brings the most rebates from energy companies and most dollars for incentives. Before LED really arrives, it will be T5 technology to hold the world over.

There's potential for the retrofits to reduce energy costs enough to cover the loan payments

Although government, environmentalists and fiscal hawks rarely agree on environmental issues, a new public-private partnership to finance U.S. energy efficiency retrofits (the “Retrofit Program”) is attracting broad public support.  The Retrofit Program is being funded by a private consortium known as PACE Commercial Consortium (“PCC”) without any government loans, subsidies, tax credits or other govenrmental assistance, other than legislative support from state and local government.  Because the Retrofit Program combines market-based solutions with traditional property-secured municipal finance, PCC believes the Retrofit Program will pave the way for other profitable, long-term clean energy solutions.

The Retrofit Program is an innovative approach to the financing of U.S. energy retrofits.  As a public-private partnership, the Retrofit Program combines the strengths of private capital and innovation with the reliability of property-secured municipal financing.  Although the results are as yet uproven, it has the potential to unlock billions of investment dollars without material cost to government.  Ultimately, the Retrofit Program could achieve what government has heretofore failed to deliver; namely, profitable clean energy, green sector jobs, local economic growth, increased property values, lower business operating costs and meaningful reductions of emissions and energy consumption.

In recent years, a number of states have looked to private bonds as a substitute for municipal bonds to finance various improvements, including energy efficiency retrofits.  By enactment of legislation known as Property Assessed Clean Energy (“PACE”) more than half of the states are now able to finance these types of projects on an exlusively privately-funded basis.  Similar to the methodology described above, property-secured private bonds are sold to finance the upfront retrofit costs. If appropriately implemented, there are no upfront costs to the property owner, and the long-term energy savings should exceed the incremental taxes or assessments on the PACE-improved property. Unfortunately, PACE-funded residential retrofits have been slow to develop because of strong resistance from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (“FHFA”).  FHFA has objected to any federal guarantee of mortgages for residential properties with PACE liens senior to mortgage liens.  Whether this issue can be resolved legally and/or politically remains to be seen.

For many commercial buildings in America, lighting represents about one-third of the total energy consumed. On average, over half of the lighting fixtures in commercial buildings operate for more than 10 hours a day and collectively consume more than 87 terawatt hours of electricity annually, which is equivalent to the energy used by nearly 3 million homes.

Recently, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced new voluntary energy-saving specifications for lighting troffers (rectangular overhead fixtures used in commercial buildings) and parking lot and parking structure lighting. Developed by the DOE’s Commercial Building Energy Alliances (CBEA), these new commercial lighting specifications can reduce energy use by more than 40% compared with conventional lighting and have the potential to save businesses up to $5 billion annually.

The new CBEA High Efficiency Troffer Specification provides minimum performance levels for LED and fluorescent troffers used in commercial buildings, including offices and restaurants. The new specification delivers energy savings of between 15% and 45% compared with conventional systems.

Scott Raybin, President of The Green Savings Company said, “We are glad to see that the DOE has created these new performance levels. Our T5 Retrofit Kit meets and exceeds what is recommended by CBEA. By changing to energy efficient lighting, business owners can reduce expenses and increase profitability.”

Through the CBEA, the Energy Department collaborates with building owners, operators, and manufacturers to develop minimum performance requirements that are voluntarily adopted by CBEA members. Increased adoption of energy-saving specifications can help American businesses cut costs, reduce energy use, and increase their competitiveness. Building operators can voluntarily adopt these specifications for new buildings or building upgrades to reduce their energy bills and carbon emissions.

One of the biggest companies of electrical consumption is Wal-Mart. They now use energy-saving lights that meet the specification and report energy savings of 58% in new parking lot sites, and is upgrading to more than 250 existing lots. Other companies considering the upgrades are Lowe’s and MGM Resorts.

As many companies are trying to increase profitability without increasing costs, reducing electrical consumption provides a very attractive return on investment.  There is a direct correlation between capital investments in energy reduction and profitability.  With the economy trending in an upward direction more and more businesses are looking to go green and save money.

A new study from the University of Notre Dame management professors Edward Conlon and Ante Glavas look at Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified bank branches at PNC Bank.

In their study, “The Relationship between Corporate Sustainability and Firm Financial Performance,” they looked at 562 PNC bank branches. Of those, 93 were LEED-certified and 496 were not. Conolon and Glavas concluded that the employees who worked in the LEED-certified branches were “more productive and engaged in their work.”

“It’s a significant finding, and it surprised me,” Conlon, an associate dean and Sorin Society Professor of Management said in a statement. “We compared the amount of money deposited at LEED and non-LEED branches, and we found more money has been deposited in the LEED branches. We divided the amount by the branches’ total number of employees to come up with a per-employee dollar amount.”

That per-employee dollar amount was nothing to sneeze at either. Conlon and Glavas found at LEED bank branches $461,300 per employee more was deposited, after controlling for other variables that influence performance (such as: consumer net worth, employee demographics, market demographics, size and age of branch, marketing spend). The researchers were not certain if it’s because LEED buildings are more attractive to visit or because their employees are more satisfied, and consequently providing better service.

“PNC has built more than 100 LEED-certified buildings, which is more than any other U.S. company,” Conlon says. “So, PNC is perfect for a LEED study because they have a lot of them and the branches all do the same thing — same products, same systems — the only thing that’s different is the LEED strategy.”

The researchers say the strategy is working, whether it’s because the buildings look better or the people inside are more fulfilled.  Speaking with customers at one of the LEED branches, they mentioned that knowing the company is working at reducing electric consumption makes them feel better about the bank and would be a contributing factor in recommending PNC to family and friends.

Hospitals are community lifelines—they provide emergency services and the kind of specialized, intensive healthcare patients can’t receive in doctors’ offices or clinics. But hospitals are also expensive to run. In Ohio, as in the rest of the country, financial difficulties have caused a number of hospitals to close or to reduce the types of services they offer. The number of Ohio hospitals with licensed maternity units, for instance, fell from 127 in 2004 to 115 in 2011 as cash-strapped facilities were forced to choose between emergency rooms and maternity wards.

As of last fall, in fact, 23 percent of our country’s hospitals were operating in the red. Many hospital administrators don’t know that energy efficiency can make a sizeable difference in their bottom lines. But in Ohio, thanks to efforts by their highly-engaged trade association, the word is starting to get out. “Energy costs are about 1.5 to 2 percent of a hospital budget,” explains Richard Sites, senior director of health policy at the non-profit Ohio Hospital Association. “But while energy costs are a small percentage, they’re a big number. Saving $100,000 on energy can easily make the difference between running a negative margin and a positive one,” he says.

A new monitoring system will allow facilities managers at up to 100 state buildings to achieve cost savings by identifying and addressing inefficiencies in energy use associated with building operations. Installation of the EfficiencySmart Insight service from EnerNOC, will give state facilities managers and EnerNOC technical advisors access to real-time energy data,“ allowing for specific and timely actions to reduce energy consumption.

The new system will detect, for example, if lights are left on overnight, if building temperatures are too high or low, or if HVAC units are kept running over the weekend in unoccupied facilities. In this way, the system will inform decisions on equipment upgrades or changes in occupant behavior that will reduce energy use and reduce operating costs for the stateThe monitoring system is being installed as part of a new state program, called Lead by Example, a partnership between the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) and the Department of Administrative Services (DAS). Lead by Example demonstrates the economic benefits of energy efficiency by achieving energy savings in state buildings.

“The state of Connecticut spends more than $100 million a year to provide heating, cooling, and electricity for its buildings,” said DEEP Commissioner Daniel C. Esty. “Lead by Example will help us bring that bill down“ providing real savings for taxpayers, reducing the environmental footprint of state government, and proving to municipalities, businesses and property owners that energy efficiency is a sound investment.”

“Knowing more about the state’s energy consumption provides a very real opportunity to better manage our facilities, achieve efficiencies, and save money,” said DAS Commissioner Donald DeFronzo. “In this time of tight budgets, we need to do more with less and this new system will help us do just that.”

Since the first screw base and socket bulbs came were made in 1882, lamps were purchased based on wattage used.  Fast-forward 130 years and there is a new metric for light bulbs and it is “lumens”. Lumens are a measurement for the amount of light produced. This makes a lot of sense since we buy things based on how much of it we get. When buying milk, we buy it by the volume (gallons). So, why should light be any different?

In addition to the new labels telling us how bright they are, there is some other important information such as:

• Estimated yearly energy cost
• Lifespan of the bulb
• Light appearance (warm to cool)
• Energy used

So the next challenge is to learn what lumens to use around the house. Here is a rule of thumb:

• To replace a 100-watt incandescent bulb, look for a bulb that gives you about 1600 lumens. If you want something dimmer, go for less lumens; if you prefer brighter light, look for more lumens.
• Replace a 75W bulb with an energy-saving bulb that gives you about 1100 lumens
• Replace a 60W bulb with an energy-saving bulb that gives you about 800 lumens
• Replace a 40W bulb with an energy-saving bulb that gives you about 450 lumens.